Best Calculated Risk:
Brent Burley
500 S. Buena Vista St.
Burbank, CA 91521
USA
Judges' Comments:
To build:
make burley
Try:
./burley
This is a draw poker program. You start with $100. Input alternates
between your bet and which cards to keep. Example:
5 <== you enter a bet of $5 (defaults to $1)
J Q J 9 5 <== your hand is Jack of Clubs, Queen of Hearts,
C H D S C Jack of Diamonds, 9 of Spades, 5 of Clubs
123 <== you enter which cards you want to keep
(enter 0 to 5 digits between 1 and 5)
J Q J J Q <== your new hand is Jack of Clubs, Queen of Hearts,
C H D S C Jack of Diamonds, Jack of Spaces, Queen of clubs
$145 (45) <== Your new balance is now $145. You had a Full House
so your payoff is 9 times your bet == 45
The payout is according to "Vegas rules":
Straight Flush 50 times your bet
Four of a Kind 25 times your bet
Full House 9 times your bet
Flush 6 times your bet
Straight 4 times your bet
3 of a Kind 3 times your bet
2 Pair 2 times your bet
Jacks or Better 1 times your bet
The program allows you to go into debt. However I'm sure you would
never control-C kill the program just because you got behind, right?
On the other hand the program never willingly exits, so you have
to leave even when you are ahead. :-)
Can you figure out a winning betting "strategy"? Then can you modify
the program so this "strategy" no longer works?
Notice the clever use of setjmp() and longjmp() calls. Can you keep
track of what state is being saved and restored?
Selected Author's Comments:
This program plays draw poker. What is unusual about it is that it
is written as a single statement -- count the semicolons! (OK, there
are really three statements if you count the variable declarations.) To
keep things simple, I have avoided the C preprocessor and tricky
statements such as "if", "for", "do", "while", "switch", and "goto".